Article 1. Aşk Dört Harfli Bir Sözcüktür by Alev Bulut
In her article, Alev Bulut is starting with stating some important issues by asking a couple of questions about translators' professional identity and their rights of making decisions on translation with a critical tone of voice. The questions are " Çevirmenin mesleki kimliği sizce neler içeriyor", "Çevirmen, çeviri kararlarını vermek ve bu kararları savunmak için hangi olanaklara sahip?"
Then, she states that translators' professional identity includes making a decision on translation and standing behind that decision. However, unfortunately she says that the one called translator might do more than one job, which means translation can be understood as a second job. So, when we look at the profiles of traslators written on books, we see that mostly they are editors, poets, writers, teachers, students translators. So, she asks which one of these has a real translator's identity. It's hard to answer since most of them answer that question by saying that they are doctors, teachers or lawyers instead of saying that their professional job is being a translator.
After that, she compares written and oral translations. In oral translation, she states that translator has his own identity while it is hard to survive in written translation. Though it seems that written translation helps translators make money, it shoudn't be forgotten that mental and physical health of translators are at risk in this job. There are also some problems in terms of lack of translators getting organized. That's why they have also problems in terms of incomes and conditions of their profession. So, mutiple identity in terms of different occupations seems a must here. She says the reason is that different occupations provide different experiences to you in order to become an expert on translation. However, she talks about a group of people, who isn't aware of their identity in translation profession. These people are the ones who mostly and worstly affected by the critics. Also, these are the ones, who translate a lot, do not take this job seriously and temporary translators. They are like invisible ones and when they get criticized, the dissappear. At this point, Bulut suggests a soluntion to that problem. That is if that was enough to do written translation to make a living, and if they did not have to translate a book every three months, they would enjoy their job and they would be prouf of their job. On the other hand, there are the ones, who has an idea like they do not make translations because of money, which creates suc a problem that people cannot perceive translation profession as a job.
In the next part, she talks about the role of being translators in terms of standing behind the decisions on translations and responsing to the critics made to them. Then, she discusses the importance of science of translation and its contrubition to making decisions on translations. She goes back to 80s to talk about this issue. She states that at that time translators were far away from being subjective while they were translating the materials. Also, she states that when newspapers have critics on faithfulness of a translator to the text, the translator defends himself by complaining about his conditions while he is translating. Readers might think that translator's creativity is against faithfullness to the original text. However, it is possible to change that idea by explaining creativity as need to make a relation to the culture and language. For instance, she ask us to think about a sentence "Love is a four-letter word". When we translate this sentece into Turkish, we say "Aşk üç harfli bir sözcüktür" if we give importance to sense for sense translation. Otherwise, the translation will be like "Aşk dört harfli bir sözcüktür", which does not make any sense in our culture and language. So, as she states, we need a process to translate the material through our creativity.
Lastly, she tells that it is easy to identify which translators can handle with all these critics. These are the ones who make their decisions beforehand and intentionally. Then she gives an example. In 2003 there was a critic on the novel "Simyacı" in terms of some of word choices. For example, the translator has preferred using "kule" instead of "minare" and "şarkı" instead of "ezan". Then, the translator has told that she has translated those words like that intentionally and made rational comments on that. So, translators need to have enough knowledge, repertoire and experience to respond the critics. Also, they need to get organized to keep up.
Article 2. On Linguistic aspects of Translation by Roman Jakobson
The article starts with an interesting example given by Bertrand Russell. According to him, in order to understand the word "cheese", for example, you need to have linguistic acquaintance with cheese. So, here it is understood that no one can understand a word as long as he doesn't encounter the meaning of the word in the lexical code of English. Also, the meaning of the word "cheese" cannot inferred from a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheddar or camembert without the help of the verbal code, according to the article. As another example, the article talks about the word "bachelor", which may be changed to a more explicit designation,"unmarried man", when the requirement is at the higher explicitness. Then, the article present three different ways of interpreting a verbal sign, which are intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translations. Intralingual translation, as another term rewording, helps you to interpret verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. Interlingual tranlation,or translation proper, provides you an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language while intersemiotic translation, as another term, makes an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.
Then, the article goes a little further to explain these three ways of interpretation. In intralingual translation, translator uses a word, which is more or less synonymous. After that, the article gives an example for it: "Every celibate is a bachelor, but not every bachelor is a celibate" can be interpreted like "every bachelor is an unmarried man, and every unmarried man is a bachelor" or "every celibate is bound not to marry and everyone who is bound not to marry is a celibate." Then, the article goes on with the explaination of interlingual translation and with its example. It is said that there is no full equivalence between code-units while adequate interpretationa of alien code-units are served by messages. Then, it compares an example, the word "cheese" in English and in Russian, which might have different meanings in different contexts.
Then, it says "no lack of grammatical device in the language translated into makes impossible a literal translation of the entire conceptual information contained in the original." In order to support this idea, it givrs some examples by using traditionals conjuctions; such as, "and" and "or". For instance, it shows the difference between the given message in "John and Peter" and "John or Peter" as well as two possible messages in "John and/or Peter". So, translating somthing, we need to consider and identify what the text is trying to indicate.
Moreover, the article states that if in a given language there are some absent grammatical category, then it means that by lexical means its meaning can be translated into than given language. Then, it explains that to be faithful to the given text is difficult since some certain grammatical category provided in a language should be translated into a language devoid of such a category. Then, again it gives an example. "She has brothers", for instance, can be interpreted like there are two or more than two brothers when you translate this into a language, which discriminates dual and plural. Again, when you translate a sentence from a language, which does not have any grammatical number, into English, you have to choose one of the two possibilities, "brother" or "brother". So, it seems that loss is inevitable.
Furthermore, the article indicates that languages are different in terms of what they can or cannot convey. Then, it explains that when we look at the cognitive level of language, cognitive function is important for recoding interpretation; such as, translation. After that it states "grammatical categories carry a high semantic import." So, when we translate any materials from a language to another, we should consider grammatical points to give the messages as much as related to the original text. Lastly, it talks about grammatical gender. For instance, "in Russian the feminine cannot designate a male person, nor the masculine specify a female."
REFLECTION REPORTS ON ARTICLES:
Article 1. Aşk Dört Harfli Bir Sözcüktür by Alev Bulut
In her article, Alev Bulut is starting with stating some important issues by asking a couple of questions about translators' professional identity and their rights of making decisions on translation with a critical tone of voice. The questions are " Çevirmenin mesleki kimliği sizce neler içeriyor", "Çevirmen, çeviri kararlarını vermek ve bu kararları savunmak için hangi olanaklara sahip?"
Then, she states that translators' professional identity includes making a decision on translation and standing behind that decision. However, unfortunately she says that the one called translator might do more than one job, which means translation can be understood as a second job. So, when we look at the profiles of traslators written on books, we see that mostly they are editors, poets, writers, teachers, students translators. So, she asks which one of these has a real translator's identity. It's hard to answer since most of them answer that question by saying that they are doctors, teachers or lawyers instead of saying that their professional job is being a translator.
After that, she compares written and oral translations. In oral translation, she states that translator has his own identity while it is hard to survive in written translation. Though it seems that written translation helps translators make money, it shoudn't be forgotten that mental and physical health of translators are at risk in this job. There are also some problems in terms of lack of translators getting organized. That's why they have also problems in terms of incomes and conditions of their profession. So, mutiple identity in terms of different occupations seems a must here. She says the reason is that different occupations provide different experiences to you in order to become an expert on translation. However, she talks about a group of people, who isn't aware of their identity in translation profession. These people are the ones who mostly and worstly affected by the critics. Also, these are the ones, who translate a lot, do not take this job seriously and temporary translators. They are like invisible ones and when they get criticized, the dissappear. At this point, Bulut suggests a soluntion to that problem. That is if that was enough to do written translation to make a living, and if they did not have to translate a book every three months, they would enjoy their job and they would be prouf of their job. On the other hand, there are the ones, who has an idea like they do not make translations because of money, which creates suc a problem that people cannot perceive translation profession as a job.
In the next part, she talks about the role of being translators in terms of standing behind the decisions on translations and responsing to the critics made to them. Then, she discusses the importance of science of translation and its contrubition to making decisions on translations. She goes back to 80s to talk about this issue. She states that at that time translators were far away from being subjective while they were translating the materials. Also, she states that when newspapers have critics on faithfulness of a translator to the text, the translator defends himself by complaining about his conditions while he is translating. Readers might think that translator's creativity is against faithfullness to the original text. However, it is possible to change that idea by explaining creativity as need to make a relation to the culture and language. For instance, she ask us to think about a sentence "Love is a four-letter word". When we translate this sentece into Turkish, we say "Aşk üç harfli bir sözcüktür" if we give importance to sense for sense translation. Otherwise, the translation will be like "Aşk dört harfli bir sözcüktür", which does not make any sense in our culture and language. So, as she states, we need a process to translate the material through our creativity.
Lastly, she tells that it is easy to identify which translators can handle with all these critics. These are the ones who make their decisions beforehand and intentionally. Then she gives an example. In 2003 there was a critic on the novel "Simyacı" in terms of some of word choices. For example, the translator has preferred using "kule" instead of "minare" and "şarkı" instead of "ezan". Then, the translator has told that she has translated those words like that intentionally and made rational comments on that. So, translators need to have enough knowledge, repertoire and experience to respond the critics. Also, they need to get organized to keep up.
Article 2. On Linguistic aspects of Translation by Roman Jakobson
http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/jakobson.pdfThe article starts with an interesting example given by Bertrand Russell. According to him, in order to understand the word "cheese", for example, you need to have linguistic acquaintance with cheese. So, here it is understood that no one can understand a word as long as he doesn't encounter the meaning of the word in the lexical code of English. Also, the meaning of the word "cheese" cannot inferred from a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheddar or camembert without the help of the verbal code, according to the article. As another example, the article talks about the word "bachelor", which may be changed to a more explicit designation,"unmarried man", when the requirement is at the higher explicitness. Then, the article present three different ways of interpreting a verbal sign, which are intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translations. Intralingual translation, as another term rewording, helps you to interpret verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. Interlingual tranlation,or translation proper, provides you an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language while intersemiotic translation, as another term, makes an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.
Then, the article goes a little further to explain these three ways of interpretation. In intralingual translation, translator uses a word, which is more or less synonymous. After that, the article gives an example for it: "Every celibate is a bachelor, but not every bachelor is a celibate" can be interpreted like "every bachelor is an unmarried man, and every unmarried man is a bachelor" or "every celibate is bound not to marry and everyone who is bound not to marry is a celibate." Then, the article goes on with the explaination of interlingual translation and with its example. It is said that there is no full equivalence between code-units while adequate interpretationa of alien code-units are served by messages. Then, it compares an example, the word "cheese" in English and in Russian, which might have different meanings in different contexts.
Then, it says "no lack of grammatical device in the language translated into makes impossible a literal translation of the entire conceptual information contained in the original." In order to support this idea, it givrs some examples by using traditionals conjuctions; such as, "and" and "or". For instance, it shows the difference between the given message in "John and Peter" and "John or Peter" as well as two possible messages in "John and/or Peter". So, translating somthing, we need to consider and identify what the text is trying to indicate.
Moreover, the article states that if in a given language there are some absent grammatical category, then it means that by lexical means its meaning can be translated into than given language. Then, it explains that to be faithful to the given text is difficult since some certain grammatical category provided in a language should be translated into a language devoid of such a category. Then, again it gives an example. "She has brothers", for instance, can be interpreted like there are two or more than two brothers when you translate this into a language, which discriminates dual and plural. Again, when you translate a sentence from a language, which does not have any grammatical number, into English, you have to choose one of the two possibilities, "brother" or "brother". So, it seems that loss is inevitable.
Furthermore, the article indicates that languages are different in terms of what they can or cannot convey. Then, it explains that when we look at the cognitive level of language, cognitive function is important for recoding interpretation; such as, translation. After that it states "grammatical categories carry a high semantic import." So, when we translate any materials from a language to another, we should consider grammatical points to give the messages as much as related to the original text. Lastly, it talks about grammatical gender. For instance, "in Russian the feminine cannot designate a male person, nor the masculine specify a female."